The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to providing event messages with a backlit keyboard used with information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems such as computing systems (e.g., personal computers and servers) include a basic input/output system (BIOS) that provides firmware that is used to perform hardware initialization during the booting process of the computing system and that is the first software that is run upon startup of that computing system. Computing systems also may include an embedded controller that performs various system tasks that are not handled by an operating system of the computing system. During a booting process of the computing system, events such as errors, warnings, system status, and/or other computing system events known in the art may occur while the BIOS and/or embedded controller are running. In many situations, the computing system does not include a dedicated display device (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD) device or other video display) that the BIOS and/or the embedded controller may use to communicate to a user the events that are taking place during startup or that occur before a display device is initialized (e.g., via BIOS-generated graphical user interface messaging.) Rather, in such situations, the BIOS and/or embedded controller must rely on diagnostic codes that allow the event to be communicated to the user of the computing system by activating and deactivating a light indicator such as a light emitting diode (LED) to provide a “blink pattern”. The user of the computing system must then record that blink pattern and rely on some documentation in order to decode the meaning of the blink pattern. As such, dealing with event codes provided through a light indicator is a manual, time-consuming process, which may cause those event codes to be ignored entirely, resulting in system issues that could have been prevented if addressed when the event was communicated.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved event messaging system.